


Song of Solomon

by penscritch



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: F/M, Follows Canon, Romantic love, fanatical religious love, spoilers galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 15:22:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2778077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penscritch/pseuds/penscritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is as strong as death.” – Song of Solmon 7:06</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of Solomon

**Author's Note:**

> Borrowed from the King James version of the Bible and the lovely translators who deciphered the Alma Toran arc for us voracious Magi fans. I love this manga so much.

“No,” Sheba says when Solomon is smiling at her so sadly and then he is gone, dissolved into the white rukh that are so much like birds or butterflies.

Her cries echo in empty air.

“You don’t have to become God… Just stay by my side,” she pleads. The scattered rukh rise in a cloud that leaves her alone, but one lingers for a moment.

It flutters by her cheek, brushing a streak of warmth that she doesn’t feel past her grief and pain.

When they return, Sheba is still on her knees weeping inconsolably in front of a suddenly older Solomon. He smiles gently, benevolently. It is the expression of a God. Her staff lies forgotten at her side.

Nearby, Arba stands, horror-stricken. Her God is dead.

 

* * *

 

Before Solomon left, he said these words:

To Sheba, “You were the one who understood me best.”

To Ugo, “As long as you are around, creation will be possible no matter what age of destruction there is to come.”

And to Arba, “You are the one I trust the most, continue to admonish me like you have always done, and devote your power to me.”

 

* * *

 

When magi are acknowledged as the main powers of the land, it is easy to forget the importance of skills in other disciplines. Under the crudely-formed regime that Sheba managed to patchwork and hold together by sheer force, there is room to maneuver through the cracks. Sheba had worn herself out maintaining what she never had the ability or gift to keep intact – she was not a natural leader and she did not have the sheer charisma that Solomon wielded to keep his subjects placidly under his rule.

Very few people knew or remembered that Arba had been Solomon’s tutor first in all things. This also meant that Arba knew diplomacy, strategy, and economy. She automatically knew how to manage what Sheba did not, and that was to Arba’s advantage.

Within the cracks of the empire, Al-Thamen grew steadily.

 

* * *

 

Solomon never speaks but to comment on the state of the rukh circulating in the world and the stability of the people. As he says, “Every living thing is individual, however their source thinks of them as a single being.”

What he did that day meant that his consciousness is spread like a god’s – a God may have a portion of his attention rooted in the physical world but it is impossible for it to occupy more than a fraction of his attention. A spiritual being belongs in the spiritual world.

Sheba smiles and tries not to cry even when he’s not there anymore. She doesn’t want him to see her cry. He’s busy making sure the world is what everyone’s dreamed of, a world where everyone’s free will decides their own destinies. She has to show him that she’s trying her hardest too, that everyone is happy.

Sheba is the only one other than Ugo who really sees Solomon outside official business. She isn’t sure whether Solomon can truly see them from where he is, but she wants him to see the best of them.

Solomon will never forsake them. Sheba sees proof of this every day when she meets and talks with Solomon like this. He never once talks to her the way he used to.

 

* * *

 

Solomon’s impending death still makes Sheba’s heart clench in her chest even though he hasn’t really been with them for years. She’s sitting quietly by his side and holding his hand, struggling not to cry when a servant rushes in and tells her that magi are rebelling throughout the city.

 

* * *

 

Sheba is always such an innocent. That darling girl looks up at her from the ground, bleeding from the gored side Arba’s attack gave her and actually has to ask “Why?”

“Why?” Arba repeats, charmed and somewhat incredulous all at once. “That should be obvious.”

 

* * *

 

Sheba is so very tired and everything hurts so much that it all blurs together. Her body is trying hard to keep her inside but it’s no longer enough. Poor Ugo is trying just as hard to help her stay, but it’s no use. She’s glad they’re all right though. If Ugo and the others are well enough to cry, then they are alive.

Her hands are still cupped protectively over her stomach. In that battle, they were evenly matched. Sheba had never thought that she would one day fight on even ground with Arba, who was only ever second to Solomon. They fought until the Al-Thamen reinforcements that Arba brought blew away under the unleashed power of their magic and clashing bolgs, fought until they both bled and snapped words of power on ingrained instinct more than real judgment. Then the crucial moment when Arba’s bolg broke and left her defenseless. She thought she knew Arba so well. Arba, who was almost a mother to her at one time.

Arba, who had tried to take the life of her and Solomon’s precious, precious child.

In that split second between her life and Aladdin’s, she unhesitatingly moved to shield him. It gave Arba the opening to wrap that terrible black rukh around herself and strike the fatal blow.

Sheba doesn’t regret any of it, even if she is very sad that she won’t be able to be there for Aladdin as a mother when he’s already missing a father. Ugo will be a wonderful uncle for him, which eases her somewhat.

Sheba is so very, very tired and when she finally lets go she thinks, ‘I tried my best, right, Solomon?’

 

* * *

 

On his deathbed, what is left of King Solomon opens his eyes and rises despite the protests of his worried subjects.

His first words when he sees Ugo holding fetal form of his and Sheba’s child, the child that was all Sheba had left of him other than his shell: “Everyone… I’m sorry.”

The person he really wants to apologize to has gone ahead of him.

 

* * *

 

Arba laughs delightedly when she sees Solomon standing in that prematurely aged body of his, fully present in a way he hasn’t been for years upon years – what are years to a fully-fledged magi? He’s still that simultaneously strong and weak boy she knew so long ago.

“Are you telling me that all the things that do not follow Ill Ilah’s will should be destroyed, Arba?” he demands, glaring up at her. As always, he is the center of the storm and so completely foolish. Idly, she wonders if he’s seen dear little Sheba’s corpse yet.

Poised above him and wrapped in her God’s embrace, “You ended up loving everything equally, but all this time I only listened to ‘that person’s voice.’ Why couldn’t the others hear it? That ‘voice’ is my only guide.”

Clearly he still doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand, no matter how much he babbles on and on about entrusting everything to a God’s voiced coated in her own desires. It was never about forgiveness either.

All that matters is he took God from her. She doesn’t care a whit for destiny – wasn’t hers mapped out for her from birth anyway? All throughout her life the only truly wondrous thing she’d experienced and wanted to keep was that moment when Ill Ilah touched her mind and for the first time she felt omnipresence and belonging.

When that arrogant king seals her away with her God, she laughs again. She can wait, for she is faithful and she is God’s. That is all she has ever wanted and doubtless there will be opportunity to strike once more.

 

* * *

 

Even in the ageless space where all the rukh gathers, that which was once Sheba takes a long time to wake from her dormant state. A brief fluttering of slightly disordered rukh is all that signals her awakening, and then she is fully aware of Solomon beside her.

The careful way he’s not touching her is silly, and the way he’s apologizing to her even sillier. Before that wrinkle between his brows forms and he really starts getting into it, she launches herself into his lap and hugs him fiercely. She’s missed him _so much_ and trust him to forget about what important things come first.

His hands come up, halt, then position themselves around her nape and waist. He’s holding onto her so tightly that she’d have bruises if she still had a physical body and she can feel him tremble slightly, unnoticeable if she wasn’t wrapped up in him.

“Solomon,” Sheba says, and can’t get anything else out. He must hear what she’s trying to say because his grip tightens a little more and Solomon presses his face into her neck, breathing deep.

They don’t move for a long time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” – Song of Solomon 7:07


End file.
